


The Rising Sun

by anr



Category: Gravity (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 02:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of their survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rising Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annie D (scaramouche)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaramouche/gifts).



> Request: Ryan and Matt, in whatever context as is possible.

  


* * *

  


In Kansas City, in a motel off the I-70, she just... stops.

They both do.

  


* * *

  


She's drifting when Matt finds her, when he slips into her room and sits on the edge of her bed and taps his fingers on her ankle.

"Want to talk about it?"

Without looking at him, she asks, "Do _you_?"

He doesn't hide his wince as well as he thinks he does.

  


* * *

  


She lets him turn on the TV and listens as he flicks through the local stations. He misses the cable networks, she knows.

He settles on the bed next to her, pillows behind his head and his foot touching the back of her calf, and skips between the news and a soap opera. Flights are still grounded world-wide but someone named Aimee-Leigh is having either Buzz or Warner's baby.

There's a hole in one of the curtains, half an inch in diameter, and she focuses on the snapshot view it offers like she once focused on the view from one of the ports on the ISS.

The seven-day weather forecast has been reduced to tomorrow's outlook only; Sammi-Jo, Aimee-Leigh's half-sister, disapproves.

  


* * *

  


He finds a game eventually, Eagles versus Cowboys, and it's a week old but then so's most everything these days.

When it gets dark, he orders out for a pizza.

  


* * *

  


She eats with him because he'll badger her if she doesn't and she likes pizza and she's hungry and _this is her room, damnit, so she'll do whatever the hell she likes, okay?_

"You know," he says, putting back the vodka he'd dug out of the mini-bar for her. "You could have just said 'no thanks'."

She smiles at him, all teeth, and says, "Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"Go to hell."

The Cowboys lose.

  


* * *

  


Ostensibly he's driving her home to Illinois. Technically, she knows, they're just driving.

After a month of debriefings, and a week in DC with the President, accepting accolades she still doesn't believe she deserves (all she did was _come back_ ), and three months on the nation-wide press circuit... when Matt offered to drop her off on his way back down South, it hadn't even occurred to her to say no.

(In space, they were tethered together for less than ninety minutes. Here, she's not convinced they still aren't.)

But Illinois was yesterday, and Kansas is today, and they haven't even unfolded the map that will lead them towards Houston yet when the continent is so much bigger now that they're on it again.

  


* * *

  


Reruns after the game: _Hogan's Heroes_ and _Gilligan's Island_.

When _Lost in Space_ comes on, she snatches the remote out of his hand and turns off the TV.

  


* * *

  


"It was the dogs."

"Hmm?"

"This afternoon. When we checked in." She's facing the window again, his hand just brushing the small of her back. The TV is still off and her voice is too loud but she knows that's what he needs. "I heard the dogs in the parking lot start to bark and I just..."

Stopped.

"Hmm."

According to the doctors they were forced to see afterwards, they're both suffering from PTSD. She can't hear a dog bark without feeling like she's suffocating; he can't handle silence for more than a few minutes at a time. Nightmares involving Shariff and the rest of their crew wake them if they sleep for too long, and they both get anxious when they can't hear (him) or touch (her) the other. All the motels and hotels they've stayed in so far since their return have had connecting rooms, and she knows the tabloids that are still circulating are having a field day with their closeness, but the rumours are a small price to pay for sanity, so.

So.

He shifts on the bed, the touch of his hand increasing (they're not _all_ rumours), and says, softly, "I have a bad feeling about this mission."

She knows this line, knows what will follow, and plays along. "Please explain?"

He tells her a story of their survival, one of his favourites. The way she tugged on the tether between them and pulled him back towards the ISS, back towards her, before he could float away after they hit the station too hard.

(It's not what actually happened but that's okay, that's fine, because she knows now that Houston _was_ listening to them in the blind, and Houston has the official records and transcripts and briefing reports as to what really occurred, so Matt can retell it however he wants:

\-- their shuttle hit, but not destroyed;

\-- the shock she got when she finally reached Tiangong and found him waiting for her following a 50,000mph hitch-hike in the debris cloud;

\-- the Soyuz with enough fuel for her to follow the sound of his voice after he drifted free;

\-- the jet pack that had just enough thrust left for him to make it back to the capsule after all, and the helmet she'd just managed to get back on before he opened the airlock, and the Russian vodka that had tasted so damn good as they reprogrammed the landing rockets to fire early.)

When he finishes talking, she smiles and says, "Blue eyes?"

He's closer to her now, his body wrapping around hers. "Brown."

  


* * *

  


When he touches her like this -- when she touches _him_ \-- it's almost like being in zero-g again, weightless and wanting, and not nearly as terrifying now that she's anchored.

Her world spins.

  


* * *

  


Tomorrow they'll check out of this motel, maybe sign an autograph or two for the owner when they do.

Tomorrow they'll unfold another map and keep driving and maybe they can't get to the Ganges but the Rockies aren't far and the sun will touch them just the same.

Tomorrow, she knows, they'll start again.

  


* * *

  


She turns the TV back on.

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/542610.html>


End file.
